Social and Behavior Change
November 21st, 2024
A 22-Year-Old Township Fighting for a Basic Need
Uncovering the problems in Anjanapura and finding solutions through co-creation
Ankita Mirani, Social Designer and Founder @Social Innovation Studio
What’s Inside:
Introduction
Along the southern edge of Bangalore, Anjanapura sprawls over 1,500 acres, roughly the size of 400 cricket fields. Founded in 2002, the township is now 22 years old but still battles for what many consider a fundamental right: access to clean, safe water.
Now, if you are thinking this is a local story. No, it’s not.
It's a pattern playing out in underserved communities across the globe, where basic amenities remain inaccessible despite decades of development promises.
In India alone, 163 million people still lack access to safe drinking water. Around 500 children under the age of five die each day from diarrhoea caused by contaminated water and poor sanitation. Urban and peri-urban settlements like Anjanapura face unique barriers: outdated water infrastructure, inequitable service delivery, and sporadic, low-pressure supply that marginalise the urban poor.
Spoiler alert: What did we do? We didn't wait around for authorities to improve the situation. Instead, we found our answer by working directly with the community.
Understanding the on-ground scenario
Was this our first move? Exactly. We immersed ourselves in the community, listening intently and mapping out what's really going on.
Through persona maps and ecosystem maps, we identified key players, power dynamics, and pain points. It was about figuring out what's happening beneath the surface, from water consumption patterns to the languages that resonate most with locals.
Persona map: A simple visual tool for understanding the needs, motivations, vulnerabilities, and lived realities of different individuals/group types in a community.
Ecosystem map: A diagram showing connections between people, resources (like water, power), institutions, and the flow of influence or authority.
These tools help us see the bigger picture and find hidden opportunities for change. Want a free template to use in your program? Check our resource room here
Working With the Community
Research, design, and diffuse. If you're in the social sector, you probably know this drill.
But let's face it, this model often sidelines the community, the very people we're here to help. It makes us forget that they understand their issues best.
When working with communities, do you ever feel:
Disconnected from the community you're trying to help?
Like, you don't understand the problem as well as the community does?
Could community engagement and participation be so much better?
If you nodded yes to any of these, you need to know it. There's a better way forward.
Connecting Health & Clean Water
Here's something that surprised us: the connection between regular access to clean water and health wasn't established in people's minds. You and I might find this association obvious, but for many in Anjanapura, these two pieces of the puzzle hadn't been connected yet.
Informing the community with knowledge that helped them link water access to health outcomes became the foundation of our project. But knowledge alone wasn't going to drive change; we needed something more powerful.
Collaboration as The Key
Designing for communities (at the risk of sounding extreme) is outdated. Dr Ingrid Mulder, professor of social transformations at TU Delft, believes that smart, innovative solutions only work when they're built into the community's daily life. In her work on 'Co-creative partnerships as catalysts for social change,' she demonstrates how service design and co-creation strengthen stakeholder relationships.
In this process, feedback is what takes the front seat. The community accepts the project as 'theirs.' But how do we make this happen?
The key: COLLABORATION
Here's what happens when you make this shift:
Better ownership by the community: They see it as theirs, not yours
Effective brainstorming from the get-go: Multiple perspectives create stronger solutions
Better trust and rapport-building: Relationships become the foundation, not an afterthought
Higher motivation levels: People are energised when they become their own creators, not just recipients
Long-lasting mindset and practice shifts: Change becomes long-lasting because it comes from within
The Breakthrough Moment
The insight that catapulted our project from ideation to execution?
The youth hold the key to bringing the community together.
Why youth? Young people bring new energy and strong social networks. Their mobility and credibility with peers often make youth the best messengers and mobilizers.
By building systems that give young people the tools, space, and voice to lead, we discovered the most effective and sustainable way to create awareness around water access, health, and climate resilience simultaneously.
The youth get excited about the opportunity to conduct surveys in their own neighbourhood. They get a chance to share awareness tools about water, health, and climate change with people around them. While taking charge of their community's welfare, these young people build interpersonal skills and leadership capacity.
This approach gives organisations like SOCHARA a system that's hyperlocal yet scalable, something that can be modified and applied across many communities.
The Three-Stage Framework
Our behaviour change approach unfolded in three key stages:
1. Absorption: We engaged with the community to uncover disparities in water access and mapped various water sources by location, including tanker water, tap water, and communal sources. This sheds light on how access varies based on different factors, impacting daily lives.
2. Introspection: We developed tools to prompt the community to reflect on how water scarcity and poor-quality water impact health and well-being. These tools also encouraged self-reflection on how individual and collective actions, like pollution, contribute to water scarcity and degrade local water sources.
3. Action: We created actionable resources designed to help the community address and respond to water challenges. These tools empower individuals with practical steps to mitigate issues stemming from water scarcity, water quality concerns, and the broader effects of climate change on local water bodies.
Building the Tools for Change
From educational videos in Hindi, English, and Kannada to booklets and posters encouraging introspection, we created comprehensive awareness materials. But the real magic happened when we trained the youth in the community.
<Images of the tools/people using them>
The Transformation
Imagine a space where youth from the community gather to learn. Today, the facilitator of this community space, social workers, and system designers come together to take baby steps toward solving the community's water issue.
The keyword here? Community mobilisation
Over just two days, these young mobilizers helped us test our solution in over 150 homes in Anjanapura, raising awareness about water scarcity and poor water quality.
But the impact went far beyond the numbers:
The community connection enabled conversations to flow naturally. People opened up easily because trust was already established.
Households were more receptive to information. It didn't come from outsiders; it came from their own neighbours and young community leaders.
The youth took it as a personal challenge. They covered 150+ houses in just 2 days, more than our external teams usually accomplish in a week.
The mobilizers couldn't get enough. It helped them establish credibility in their community, motivating them to continue mobilisation beyond the initial 2-day implementation period.
The Ripple Effect
The ripple effect, a concept from both physics and sociology, describes how a single action triggers a chain reaction of further actions and outcomes, much like dropping a pebble into water creates expanding waves.
In community development, this means that the positive impact from even a small initiative can radiate outward, influencing far more people, behaviours, and systems than expected.
How is it part of the program?
The program wasn't a cookie-cutter awareness raiser. It created something bigger than awareness. It built agency. People learned about water-health connections. They became advocates for change in their own community. The youth became leaders, amplifying change across the township.
"This key is not about 'fixing' things. It's about redefining how change happens, one community at a time."
Ready to Make the Shift?
Water, health, and climate change are all connected, just like communities, solutions, and sustainable impact. The Anjanapura project showed us that when you design with communities instead of for them, you are not only solving problems but building movements too.
So we're here to push you to think differently, to be process innovators and let the process do the magic for you.
The question isn't whether co-creation works. The question is: can your initiative make space for all the transformative changes that co-design can offer? Because when communities hold the space and voice to lead their own change, that's when real transformation happens.
Want the full report where we break it down in more detail, our project in Anjanapura? Click to download the full report!
Need help applying social and behaviour change frameworks to your programs? That's what we do at Social Innovation Studio! Get in touch with us.
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